Apple's subscription model is boon to consumers, bad for publishersAs we reported earlier, Apple announced the arrival of new subscription services for apps in the App Store today. According to the press release, subscriptions purchased from within the App Store will utilize the same billing system currently employed for app and in-app purchases. Publishers are free to set the length and price of the subscriptions, which can be weekly, monthly, bi-monthly, quarterly, bi-yearly or yearly. Then with one click, customers choose the length of their subscription and are immediately charged for it.
The great thing about these digital subscriptions for customers is that they can cancel their subscription at any time with very little hassle. They simply need to go to their personal account page to stop re-billing or cancel a current subscription. Anyone who has ever dealt with the headache of getting out of a magazine subscription will recognize this as a huge benefit of Apple's subscription model.
However, as we've already seen, many content-based app publishers might not like all the new terms that Apple has laid out. All publishers of content-based apps (like Netflix, Hulu, etc) must comply with Apple's new subscription service guidelines by June 30th or risk removal of their app from the App Store. The guideline compliance was originally rumored to go into effect March 31, but it seems app publishers have four more months to make their apps compliant. Content-based app publishers are still free to sell content outside of the apps (like buying a Kindle magazine subscription from Amazon.com), but they now must offer the same content available for purchase directly within the app itself at the same or better price.Continue reading Apple's subscription model is boon to consumers, bad for publishersApple's subscription model is boon to consumers, bad for publishers originally appeared on TUAW on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 15:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.Source | Permalink | Email this | Comments
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